The Gathering
by lostlikeme
Summary: Your name is Dave Strider; the year is 1999. Eleven horrifying years after your first trip to the Makara Bros. Dark Carnival, and your oversized Texan home hasn't been the same since. Warning for explicit sex, incest, non-consent, violence, and other acts of horror! Read at your own risk.
1. Chapter 1

**_1988, Houston, Texas_**

Your name is Dave Strider and today is your fifth birthday. It is an especially important birthday because it signifies that you are old enough to wield your first katana, a milestone you have been looking forward too with equal amounts of fervor and trepidation. Bro assures you that everything will be fine, and though you think it's a little overkill you allow him to blindfold you for the ride to see your birthday surprise anyway. Your small, sweaty fingers are still tightly wrapped around Lil Cal's arm when the first speedbump sends your body lurching forward.

"You okay little man?" Bro asks, forearm pressing against your chest protectively. You nod and adjust the blindfold over your pointed shades.

By the time Bro removes the cloth the smell of popcorn has nearly given away the surprise. The Houston stadium towers before you, bright lights illuminating oversized letters that you can only just barely recognize. You tighten your fist around Bro's fingers as you lean forward to get a better look at one of the posters. You understand the words in your mind and of course you know how to sign it but your tongue still slips up when you try to sound it out.

"Maah-caar-aah," you say slowly. "Bruuh-oos," you finish in a quiet whisper. You silently form the sounds with your lips a second time before realization fully dawns on you. "Makara Brothers!" you announce in a hushed voice, rocking back on your heels in excitement. "They're really real?" you say in disbelief, staring up at the way the neon signs shine against the dark night sky. "And they're really here?" It's the most you've said all day and the conversation leaves you breathless.

Bro noods before ruffling your hair. You scowl because you're getting way too old for gestures of affection like that. "You know it lil' man, we got the whole nine yards." He stuffs his hand into his pocket and pulls out two small squares of paper. "Front row seats," he explains. "To the best show in town." You try your best to look as overjoyed as you know you should be feeling.

"Don't worry," Bro says. "I remember what turning five means," he says with a wink. "Your other present is at home, so let's just have fun for now. Okay kiddo?"

A smile splits your face before you can even attempt to be cool. You want to assure him he's the best brother ever but you can't find the right words. Instead you tug him towards the entrance. Your fingers twitch compulsively but Bro doesn't know sign language, won't understand. "Clowns," you manage at last, tripping over your own excitement.

It turns out that the circus consists of a lot of waiting, something that becomes infinitely more easy to stomach with the assistance of caramelized popcorn and candy apples. Sugary syrup coats your front teeth as you bite into an apple, and one wiggles with a telling looseness. The lights fizzle out one by one before blinking several times and shining a single spotlight onto the stage.

The face-painted Ringleader announces the arrival of his miracle band of misfits, invites the audience to join him in his ascension into the darkest of dark carnivals. The show is entirely run by similarly painted performers proudly dressed in purple, from the animal trainers to acrobats and everything in between. Ironically, it's the magic act that pushes your nerves to their limits, heart thundering desperately against your ribcage. Bro hands you chapstick when he notices the way you're gnawing on your bottom lip in anticipation, but you can't pull your eyes away even as you spread strawberry-banana Lip Smackers haphazardly across your mouth.

"I'm looking for a fearless little star monkey who'd like to volunteer to help us perform our next magical feat," the Ringleader says. He looks unsurprised as hundreds of hands shoot into the air. You stretch your arm as far up as you can manage, wiggling your fingertips. "The catch is that for this trick you must be willing to allow us to use an important item on your person." Several hands fall and your own wavers anxiously.

The Ringleader makes broad hand gestures as he explains. "This item can be something of monetary value, like a watch. Or it can be an item of emotional value, like a treasured photograph." Lil Cal's head bobs above your own as you wave him in the air. The Ringleader locks his eyes on yours and motions for you to stand. "Step right up little brother. Tell us your name."

Bro encourages you forward with a shooing hand motion and so you swallow up your nervousness and scuttle down the aisle onto the stage. The Ringleader hands you a microphone that's heavy and slick in your fingers. "Dave," you mutter in a quiet, cracked voice. Bro shoots you a thumbs up from the audience and relief washes over you. "Dave Strider," you repeat louder.

The Ringleader steps back in a sweeping motion that's almost frightening under the blinding glow of the fluorescent spotlight. "And who is this?" he asks, hunching over and gesturing to the wooden dummy dangling from your left hand. From this close you can see where his shiny dark skin streaks through the green paint, a greasy red swirl on either cheek almost like on your puppet.

"Lil Cal," you say proudly, holding up the puppet ineffectively for the audience to see. "Present from my Bro." you say, pointing. A spotlight hovers briefly over Bro and he gives a small wave.

The Ringleader smiles. "And would I be right if I guessed that today is also your birthday?" When he smiles his teeth appear too big and too pointy for the size of his mouth, but your brother's presence just a few meters away assures your safety.

Your eyes widen in amazement behind your sunglasses. "Yes," you say, quietly awed. "How did you know?"

The Ringleader delivers a small smile and a wink. You realize he has eyes the same color as your own. "A magician must never reveal his secrets," he says. "Ready for a birthday surprise?" he asks, reaching towards your most prized possession. "Don't worry," he says sweetly. "I promise I'll give it back."

Without further hesitation you hand Lil Cal over, eyes skittering to gauge Bro's reaction. The Ringleader holds Lil Cal high in the air and two cloaked figures appear from behind him, dragging forth a smaller, third person. For a brief moment you think that you're going to meet your first little person, but upon further inspection you realize that it's merely a boy not much older than yourself.

They press his palm flat against Lil Cal's head and begin chanting. The words are unrecognizable, the sound of their language foreign and sharp. As the chanting continues a gust of wind tears through the center of the stage, surging forward and propelling Lil Cal into the air where his wooden body hovers above the Ringleader's head. The boy begins screaming as the chanting rises in volume, and when you turn around to reach out for Bro you realize that everything behind you has disappeared.

Your heart begins to race as your eyes scan the darkness for recognizable shapes, frantically searching for the rows of comfortable seats you know should be there. The mood ring on your finger darkens as tears well in your eyes. The first figure flips back the hood of the third to reveal a boy with frightened violet eyes and lips shown shut with dark black thread. He stares directly at you before slowly lifting his arms and connecting his fingers. The boy signs at a speed so fast your eyes can barely track the movement, your brain struggling to keep up and comprehend while many of the signs are completely unfamiliar. Welcome to the Dark Carnival, he says. Prepare to be awakened.

You watch, horrified and mesmerized as the taller clown catches the end of the thread between his thumb and forefinger before giving it a firm tug. The thread begins sliding through the holes in his lips, dark indigo staining the fabric and splashing to the floor. When the last of it is removed the clown throws back his head and unhinges his jaw as a stream of white noise and whispering bursts forth.

Belatedly, Dave realizes the noise isn't a voice at all, but rather the low hum of hundreds of insects. They gather in hordes as the boy's body begins to decompose at an accelerated speed, bile rising in the back of your throat. When the boy begins screeching in pain you can't stop yourself from flinching and looking away. "Don't be such a fucking pussy," The Ringleader says, gripping your skull in his skeletal fingers and forcing you to watch.

A high pitched scream explodes in the air and the room goes dark, Lil Cal falling to the tiled stage with a soft thud.

The crowd applauds in a deafening uproar, standing in their seats to clap and shriek in amazement. You struggle to catch your breath, chest heaving with effort. "Dave!" a familiar voice shouts. Your eyes lock on Bro's face and you swallow the lump in your throat and lurch forward.

"Don't forget this," a deep voice says. Lil Cal is thrust into your arms while you breathe quick shallow breaths at the thought of his unhinging jaw. A chaotic noise bursts into your mind and erupts behind your temple. Let's go motherfucker, says the voice. You can see Lil Cal's shiny plastic eyes shift in your peripheral vision. Drop me and you will motherfucking regret it.

 ** _1999, Houston, Texas_**

You wake up in sweat soaked sheets gasping for air. Goosebumps pepper your arms and every hair stands on end as you struggle to steady your breathing. The dream fades as consciousness returns, details slipping away until all that's left is a blur of indigo and the feeling of cold, unreasonable fear. A bead of sweat trailing down the skin of your neck is enough to make you flinch instinctively, and the sudden flash of your own pale arm moving in the darkness nearly makes you scream. Get a hold of yourself Strider, lest you succumb to embarrassing levels of being a little bitch.

When you turn on the lamp beside your bed the light bulb flickers briefly before burning out, and after taking a deep breath you concede to face the constant unintentional irony that is your life. Humming pop music only just barely manages to quell your racing mind, drowning in unhelpful predictions about the horrors that lurk in the hallways of your oversized Texan home. You'll admit it to no one, but you make it to the bathroom on sheer visualization of Britney's Spears' new music video. You aren't exactly into blondes, and you aren't exactly into underage schoolgirls, but somehow that video presses all of the right buttons anyway.

By the time you make it to the closet your cock is at half mast, and you lose interest in shuffling through towels for light bulbs when a magazine slides off the top shelf and lands at your feet. The front features a nude black man sporting an erection the size of a yardstick while the title reads "Black Inches, #134." You flip through a few pages with a detached sort of interest before standing on tiptoe and blindly reaching around in search of another. Three more magazines fall to the floor, all of which cater exclusively to older men who like to fuck "tight, blond twinks."

The notion makes you uncomfortable but not enough to make you stop searching, and much to your triumph you are rewarded when the fifth and final magazine that falls onto your face features a woman. Unfortunately, she's sandwiched between two men who also appear to be very fond of one another, and when your eyes scan the title "Bisexual Threesomes," all the pieces fall perfectly into place. You forgo tradition in favor of desperation, flicking through the pages at the counter beside the sink.

You palm your dick through your boxers briefly before slipping your hand inside, biting your lip as you give it a firm squeeze. There are a few pictures with men blowing each other that you try to ignore, focusing instead on the dark haired woman they end up fucking. There's a little dialogue in the corner of the page that your brain almost compulsively reads, but you force the train of thought to derail before you end up creating an entire backstory for the three of them and featuring them in your next half finished screenplay.

"Shit," you mumble as your eyelashes flutter and the movement of your reflection shifting almost startles you.

It's distracting now that you've noticed it, the steady rhythmic motion of your hand jerking your dick. You shove self-absorption aside and back up to get a better view, swiping your thumb over the slit as your back hits the wall. The action forces a low groan from the back of your throat, and with your eyes half closed it's too easy to see someone else's hand palming your dick, a soft, feminine hand, like the one that belongs to Jade Harley. Your balls tighten at the thought, chest heaving in anticipation.

Jade is picture perfect, small and smart with big dorky glasses and an occasionally condescending smile. She whispers nerdy, dirty sciency things into your ear as she strokes your cock, licking your earlobe and scratching at your chest.

"The law of conservation," she gasps. "States that orgasms may be created, not destroyed-" she trails off when you slip under her shirt, pressing your fingers against her hardening nipples. She kisses you first and moans into your mouth when you slip your hand inside her panties.

Fuck, she's wet. You slide two fingers between the lips of her pussy and rub until she's gasping against your neck. Jade grips your shoulder as she rocks against your hand, dick still bobbing in her loose grip. She squeezes you in quick spasms when you plunge your fingers inside of her tight hole. She squeals when you crook them, bucking forward and grinding down as she gasps. She's surprisingly sensitive and inordinately quick to come, and as soon as the aftershocks cease she drops to her knees in front of you.

Your dick feels like stone and your balls are so tight you can't imagine that you'll last more than six minutes. When Jade wraps both hands around your cock and presses her tongue flat against the head you halve the time and divide the difference. Seventy-three seconds later and you've lost all ability to compute basic math.

Your eyes flash open as you near orgasm and for a brief moment you see Jade Harley in the mirror, kneeling at your feet with your dick in her mouth. She slobs your knob like a veritable pro until a coil unhinges in your belly and explodes from your dick in thick white spurts. You try warning Jade but all that escapes your throat is a strangled, desperate noise. She swallows you to the hilt as your dick twitches a second time, trapped in the hot, wet column of her throat.

After the third and final load Jade pulls away and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear like a delicate goddamn flower, like she didn't just blow you in your bathroom and swallow. Slouching against the wall to catch your breath, you watch as mirror Jade turns away from mirror Dave to face you. Her mouth opens to reveal a lump of vaguely flesh colored mass. Her red eyes widen and she spits the lump onto the floor with a wicked grin. Recognition dawns on you in an embarrassingly high pitched scream.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!" your throat hurts but you can't will your mouth to shut.

The bathroom door flies open and Bro charges in with his tsuguri katana, eyes wide and frantic as he slips into his best defensive form. When he notices you his eyebrows shoot up to the top of his forehead. He glances down to the homoerotic pornography at his feet, before turning his attention back to the floor where you're pathetically crouched in the fetal position with your pants around your ankles.

Bro walks over to the counter where you've left "Bisexual Threesomes," and you try to uncurl and look a little more casual. Bro snorts as he thumbs through the pages in the magazine and you focus on regulating your heartbeat. He turns to you and points to a page featuring a young woman between two identical mocha skinned twins.

"I'd love to be the cream filling in that oreo," Bro says with a sly smirk. "If you know what I mean."

He stares pointedly at the spot between your legs for several seconds. Embarrassed, you tuck yourself back into your boxers and mutter an apology. Bro shakes his head. "Apology not necessary," he says. "Though I can't say I'd turn down an explanation for why you were screaming 'what the fuck' at three fifteen in the morning." Bro closes the magazine in his hands. "You know, when I had my sexuality crisis, I had it a whole lot quieter," he tells you.

You sigh and try to think of a reasonable way to explain what you just experienced. "Jade Harley bit off my dick," you say at last.

After the initial shock and panic ebbs away you manage to explain the entire incident to Bro, sparing him as many of the lurid details as possible. The last thing you want is your older brother being privy to your sexual fantasies. He's sitting on the countertop across from you, swaying his feet lightly and balancing his katana in the center of his palm. The third time it almost slips and slices open a major artery, Bro sits it down beside him and opens his mouth to speak.

"So let me get this straight. You had a bad dream?" he starts.

Your eye twitches. "Night terror," you correct.

Bro shrugs. "Same difference." You bite your tongue to keep yourself from flipping the fuck out. "So you had a bad dream, came in here to jerkoff, and then had a minor hallucination?"

Lips pressed into a thin line, you shake your head. "First of all, it was a night terror, and possibly precognitive." Bro rolls his eyes but it doesn't deter you. "Secondly, if I had been hallucinating-which I wasn't-I think it's safe to say that it would break at least a seven-point-nine on the hallucination scale." Bro waits for you to finish, unimpressed. "And thirdly, I didn't come in here to jerk off, I came in here looking for light bulbs and your stash of dirty magazines distracted me."

"Tomatoes, tomatas," Bro says disinterestedly.

You shoot him the most serious glare you can manage, being sure to maintain eye contact to assert your position as alpha. "This house is haunted," you say slowly for dramatic effect. "And we both know it."

Bro laughs, slides off the countertop, and tosses you the magazine over his shoulder as he heads for the door. "Don't stay up too late." he murmurs. You can't think of anything clever to say until Bro has rounded the corner and started down the hallway towards his bedroom. It doesn't matter, you're too angry to care about what the conversation lapse says about your intellect.

"We're moving out of this fucked up Scooby-Doo Halloween Special!" you scream as you towel up dried jizz off the bathroom floor.

You spend the rest of the night hunched over a Gameboy Color under three layers of blankets, catching wild pokemon beside the dim glow of the bedroom lamp and apprehensively glancing in the direction of the closet door. When you stumble into the kitchen four hours later Bro is already sitting at the counter, butterfly clips ironically pinning back his bright blond hair as he fiddles with his tamagotchi pet with one hand and shovels a poptart into his mouth with the other.

"You look well rested," Bro quips as you rummage through the freezer in search of french toast sticks.

You flash him your middle finger and roll your eyes. "Don't you have a lite brite calling your name or a bunch of anthropomorphic ponies to watch?"

Dirk's face remains impassive. "I'm not a just huge dick-sucking faggot factory twenty-four-seven," he informs you.

"Could have fooled me," you mutter, lining up four slices worth of frozen french toast sticks into your toaster. What? It isn't as if you splurged and spent extra on the deluxe model for no reason. It has four slots. You pull up a stool and Lil Cal almost frightens you into squeezing an entire bottle of maple syrup onto your breakfast.

"Does he really need to be at the kitchen table?" you complain.

Bro peers at you from over his bright red tamagotchi. Thirty-two is definitely too old to be playing with virtual pet animals but hey, you just spent four hours of your life participating in what might as well be a virtual dog fighting ring. Who are you to judge? "I'm not going to isolate Lil Cal from his family because you had a nightmare."

Bottling the rage that's boiling in your gut, you shake your head at his audacity and condescension. "You know, sometimes it feels like he's your brother, and I'm just a useless puppet," you say.

When you lean over your plate to take a bite of unevenly heated french toast substitute the newspaper beneath Lil Cal's wooden leg catches your eye. Suddenly your empty threat from this morning is fueled with determination and full of possibility. "I still want to move," you announce between bites of syrup and bread. "To California," you demand. "Los Angeles," you specify, eyes skittering across the article.

Bro shakes his head and sets down Lil Hal on the countertop so that you know he means business. "Absolutely not," he says evenly. You can't see his eyes behind his shades but his brows are narrowed and his jaw is tense.

You aren't budging. "You're not my real Dad," you tell him. Then, more steadily, you say, "I'll move without you."

Bro calls your bluff with a laugh and wave of his wrist. "Number for the U-haul is in the phonebook," he informs you. "Make sure you send me a postcard from LA."

As a last resort you heave your chest in the heaviest, noisiest sigh you can manage and roll your eyes. "We both know California is the homosexual capital of the entire world," you say. Bro's face remains apathetic. "And how long have you been single now? Two, three...four years?" Bro doesn't respond. "How is the gay scene in Houston anyway? Cloudy with a chance of gaybashing?"

At that Bro can't help but scoff, but you continue your unconvincing tirade like the salesman who advertises for the used furniture outlet The Dump. "The state itself is geographically the prostate of the United States of America," you try. Bro quirks a brow. "Every gym there is practically a big gay orgy waiting to happen, the streets are crawling with attractive, nubile young twinks-"

Bro stops you with a single hand gesture. "Dave, I've lived in Los Angeles. In the seventies. In the eighties. Before I found out I had a little brother on his way into foster care back in Houston, remember?"

Undefeated, you continue your methods of persuasion. "Bro, that was like…thirty years ago." Bro shrugs and you shake your head. "No, what I'm saying is, imagine how much gayer it's gotten." You raise your eyebrows suggestively and give him a few moments to consider what you've said.

"Who am I kidding?" Bro mutters to himself as as he heads for the kitchen sink. He turns to you and tips his shades in a mockery of seduction. "You had me at prostate."

Bro exits the kitchen with a flare and when you slip your plate into the sink a sudden movement catches your eye. You turn to find the countertop clear sans the newspaper, and you desperately try to convince yourself that Bro snagged Lil Cal on the way out.


	2. Chapter 2

_**1984, Los Angeles, California**_

Your name is Dirk Strider, and today is your twenty-first birthday. (At least, that's what you tell the bouncer.) The tree trunk of a man doesn't even ask for ID before shuffling you inside. You're offended; you were kind of looking forward to the adrenaline rush, the titillating jailbait tango. Stuffing your perfectly forged photo ID back in your pocket, you barely have time to cringe at the godawful shitracket blasting from the speakers. Some kind of shitty pop mashup that used to be Cyndi Lauper.

Three drinks in, you meet Equius for the first time, outcasted at the bar away from the bump and grind of the dancefloor. Unable to see his face behind the leather, he does about as much for you as the music. His body is ripped, his height is towering, but it's his body language bleeding the perfect kind of bitch that trips your trigger. He stands straight with squared shoulders all but looking down his nose in distaste at you. You could fuck a guy like that all night without seeing his face. You eye his ass as you trail behind him, trying to remember what he just said.

"Your boyfriend's a drug dealer?" you ask, and he swivels so fast in your direction for a moment you think he might actually slug you.

"We aren't exclusive," he says, barely concealing his distaste with a whisper. "And I prefer the term 'street pharmacist'."

For a submissive he's a cocky sonuvabitch, and you really fucking like that. Breaking in a bitch is kind of your biggest fantasy, and nobody needs to know you can barely break in a pair of boots. You tried hard not to show up looking like Rainbow Brite Jr., but even in heels it's hard to imagine that much power and muscle under your command and control.

The dude's boyfriend is more than a little dodgy, that much you know before meeting him. The journey alone is a rough indicator, the way you have to follow Equius through empty hallways and slide into an unlabeled back door. Where you are now, you realize, is much less of a club club and much more of a sex club. Not exactly an orgy, but close enough. Scattered couples and Gamzee's creepy leer as Equius shuffles a small plastic packet into your palm.

"Meet me in the bathroom," he whispers and walks briskly away.

You don't check, but you're certain there's a small bag of cocaine in your palm. The size is absurd, like a five pound bag of sugar for an entire dollhouse family. Gamzee shoves you into the stall after Equius and squeezes in behind you. There's so much grime you aren't sure where to put your hands. The bathroom reeks like something dead and your boot heel slides through something wet. You elbow Gamzee when he squeezes your hips and Equius shudders, tilting his neck. Gamzee unzips part of the leather hood and smears a line across the artery on Equius' neck. Your heart is already redoubling, overheated between the two of them.

Gamzee splits two breaths between his nostrils and licks the last of the powder right from Equius' dark skin. When he turns to you looking like the wrong end of a powdered donut he claps a hand around your shoulders. "Are you sure I can't help a brother up into his motherfucking chill?" he licks his lips.

Resolutely, you shake your head. Just thinking about the loss of control makes your skin crawl. "Hugs not drugs," you mutter weakly, but the peer pressure is imminent. Your control is slipping, id trampling the superego in a desperate grab for instant gratification. This is how you were raised, after all.

"No," you tell him, and Gamzee laughs.

Two hours and two bumps later you're sweating like a pig and tripping over your own tongue in an effort to prove that The Last Unicorn is really just a cover for the creator's clinical depression and slow descent into existentialist madness. You've had weirder conversations sober, but it doesn't detract from the cognitive dissonance. Somewhere between Twilight Sparkle's tail and "hung like a horse" you lose it, suffocating under the weight of your own lost metaphors. Lost in the hot sauce, Gamzee tells you. In retrospect this is just the sexy equine backdrop for what you're about to do. What are you about to do, exactly?

It doesn't really hit you until you're back in the lounge-wherever that is. The only thing you really focus on is the overused electric disco beat in the background, a remix of Material Girl that would make Nine Inch Nails cry. The thought almost makes you remember what it's like to have feelings. The last time you cried was before you started primary school, when the police took you away from Roxy. You take two hits from a joint in the courtyard and try to keep a straight face when Gamzee throws a rap that even your little brother could toss back.

 **DIRK - Enter rap battle.**

 **GAMZEE:** BuT I'M AlL ScOpIn aT MiRaClEs tHaT ArE Up iN ThE AiR  
 **GAMZEE:** GoT My sEe oN Of mIrAcLeS, tHeY'Re hErE AnD ThEy'rE ThErE  
 **GAMZEE:** I Be cHeCkIn tHe mIrAcLeS WhIlE FaLlInG DoWn sTaIrS  
 **GAMZEE:** OcEaNs oF FaYgO FuCkIn gLiTtEr lIkE SpAcE  
 **GAMZEE:** A FiSt fUlL Of sTaRdUsT'S WhAt's pOoFiN My fAcE  
 **GAMZEE:** AnOtHeR MiRaClE RiSeS BeFoRe mY EyEs  
 **GAMZEE:** A NeW BrO Is bOrN, aNoThEr fAcE Of lIeS  
 **GAMZEE:** AnOtHeR FiVe lItErS Of rAiNbOw pAiNt  
 **GAMZEE:** WiTh eAcH ClOwN ThAt'S BoRn, tHeRe sHiNeS A SaInT  
 **DIRK:** It's time for another rap smack, another clap back.  
 **DIRK:** Two dead beats, another fast track.  
 **DIRK:** Was that rap real? Cause you left slack.  
 **GAMZEE:** ThAt's wHaTs uP WiTh tHe tHiNg tHaT I Be iN ThE KnOw  
 **GAMZEE:** SoMeTiMeS To wIn tHe rAcE YoU GoTtA PaCe iT SlOw  
 **DIRK:** Another shudder for each word you udder.  
 **DIRK:** The way you rhyme you might as well stutter.  
 **DIRK:** Although you breathe like a buck, you breed like a sow.  
 **DIRK:** Head tilted and cowed, you just want to be told how  
 **DIRK:** If I told you to jump, you'd ask me, "Right now?"  
 **DIRK:** C'mon Ponyboy, where's the beef?  
 **DIRK:** I'm the leader of this crap in chief.  
 **EQUIUS:** I prefer the term, "poet."  
 **DIRK:** A poet's just another word for rapper who doesn't own it.  
 **EQUIUS:** I'd hazard in practice that it's a glass of what's lactic that would impact this  
 **EQUIUS:** Pragmatic to presume? A human metric for grandness stands on fondness in honest  
 **EQUIUS:** One foot in the spectrum, one finger in the rectum of wrongness.  
 **EQUIUS:** It's clear it is the colostrum in longness you're lacking. That STRONGNESS  
 **EQUIUS:** It must be true that it's moot crying over what you spilt  
 **EQUIUS:** Just another square cracker that goes soft in chocolate milk  
 **EQUIUS:** It's not ilk that I toss but a gentleman must represent  
 **EQUIUS:** I have nothing left to prove as you are merely two percent

 **DIRK - Pop a boner.**

Usually your self control is something to write to home about. Tonight your body beckons you toward bonerville, northbound on the trail of cocaine and fairydust Equius left behind for you. The way he verbally reamed you is making you want to physically ream him-stuff your dick inside him until he's the one begging for mercy. He come untouched if you press the right buttons. Twelve months shy of legal adulthood, you're ready for the privilege and control your childhood never granted you.

Equius nods his assent and your tirade continues. Your mouth is moving faster than your brain can process. "These assholes wouldn't know real art if it climbed out of a Van Gogh painting and took a multicolored shit on their collective faces." You aren't really sure who "these assholes" are exactly, but they aren't you or Equius, and that's what's important.

When Equius speaks his tongue brushes his lips in a way that forces you to think about fellatio. "The Last Unicorn is truly a masterful work of art."

"You're like a fucking work of art," you say, before snorting another line of coke off his glistening muscled chest.

The high feels better when Equius is underneath you. The breadth of his torso stretches your legs wide. When you drag your tongue across the roof of his mouth you realize your knees aren't even brushing the floor. You yank his nipples and suck on his tongue until he bucks like a bull beneath you.

"Fuck," you tell him. You know he can feel you through your clothes the way you can feel him. "You need a saddle, don't you?"

Dark black hair falls in a braid at his back and the loss of clothes reveals high cheek bones and skin like columbian coffee beans. You've watched a lot of porn but none of it looked quite as glorious as this: muscles flexing around shoulder blades and sweat sliding like a stream through a mountainous six pack. You're willing to bet Equius can bench press your weight on a bad night. The size difference does little to intimidate you. Somehow, keeping him in line comes naturally, the same as it did with real horses before you left the ranch and went into foster care.

"Please," Equius says in a whisper when you squeeze him through the leather.

Tainted Love blasts from the speaker system and you wonder if this is a sign from God. At the very least, seeing Equius finger himself feels like a religious experience. He's tight but he works himself open like a pro, until lube sticks to his fingers when he pulls them from his asshole. After this, you are officially agnostic.

You really want to fuck him now. There's a condom every fruity flavor of the rainbow in a bowl by the bar but for the first time you find yourself wondering if it's worth it to go bareback. AIDS isn't really worth it but who the fuck knows anything about preventive sex care? It's the early eighties. Everyone still thinks the gays brought it upon society like a plague of locusts. Luckily, Equius is more than prepared.

"You got yourself ready," you praise him. "But you forgot all about me."

Equius drops gracefully to his knees, fingers shaking with self restraint as he unzips you and rolls a condom on with his mouth. The pink latex makes your dick look like you just finished fucking a gummy bear, but even through the condom you can tell Equius has impeccable technique. To be fair, the closest you've come to sex before now is the time you carved a hole into the couch cushion when you were eleven and fucked it until you chafed your dick. When you got caught they sent you to a group home because no one else would take a child with sexual misbehavior.

"Please," Equius gasps again, and you feel graciously inclined to reward him.

When you finish tying the condom off you notice his braid is undone, thick black hair framing his face like a horse's mane. You retract your hand from his scalp and the hair falls out all at once, slipping through your fingers like uncooked spaghetti. Upon second observation, your hand is entrenched in a bale of straw. Someone laughs behind you, deep and rumbly like a car engine dragging against asphalt.

It takes you several long, panic ridden seconds to digest the fact that Gamzee is still there, that he'd never left and somehow you hadn't noticed. The thought that he was there all along silently listening, watching, lurking is unbearable. Equius is MIA, so you try not to wonder how long you were rolling around alone in the haystack that inexplicably exists in the backroom of a nightclub. There's a sweat breaking out on the back of your neck but you tell yourself everything is going to be fine.

With a sudden jolt, you remember you are on drugs. "This is coke?"

You've never done it before but you know enough people to know it shouldn't normally make you feel like this. Instead of on top of the world your equilibrium feels smashed, your center of gravity lopsided. The ceiling is illuminated like an angel's halo and your vision fades like an 8-bit tamagotchi screen running low on batteries. It feels like reality has been wrenched two inches to the left.

"And a little motherfuckin magic," Gamzee assures you with a wicked smile. "My brother."

The thought seizes you and sends your mind racing. You feel your own stupidity ricocheting back at you. It could have been laced with anything. You look at Gamzee for what feels like the first time. The rat's nest on his head hardly resembles hair. He offers you a harmless, toothy smile that nearly blinds you under the beam of the blacklight. Did his eyes always rotate like pinwheels in the breeze, or is he having a seizure? The pores on his face seem to increase in size when his chest rises.

Fear paralyzes you, not for the first time. Luckily, you can't remember the first time. Maybe this is acid. Maybe this is shrooms. Why not both, or even something much worse?

"Go to hell," you tell him.

"Me? If it's any motherfucker that should be up and fearing for the rapture, it's you." Gamzee appears beside you impossibly fast, even while still moving in lazy, drawn out movements. Time isn't adding up. Gamzee clasps your shoulder like you share any sense of camaraderie. "I guess I'm all motherfuckin weirding out at some extent to my own motherfuckin self."

Something in your gut stills with the overwhelming knowledge that at last, somebody knows. You swallow the long stamped urge to cry for Roxy bubbling in your throat.

"Hey," Gamzee says, and even through the drug haze you manage a halfhearted attempt to shrug him away. You miscalculate and nearly end up face first on the floor. "You're a motherfucker who knows all about blood brothers," he reminds you. His voice rises and falls, ping ponging between reggae radio host and psychopathic preacher at the pulpit. "I seen the way you up and get your wicked on. That motherfuckin blasphemy stuffed in the sock drawer, like that ever hid a motherfucker's true nature!"

For a second, you don't breath. The sock drawer is your most guarded secret. The photographs don't exist yet, the ones you know you're going to stuff in your dresser after you snap them with the polaroid camera. Dave, back before you ever gave him his first pair of shades, grinning naked from a bathtub full of toys with a sudsy fauxhawk. You don't beat off to that one, but sometimes it gets you in the mood. The picture behind it features Dave crying from behind heart-shaped frames. Ignoring your advice, he had a hell of a first day of Kindergarten. The corner is curling from when you got it wet.

"It's the wicked soul that you can't hide, brother," Gamzee's hot breath tickles the hair on the back of your neck. "I can smell the rot in you from here." Something is happening with your body. You're losing control of it. Gamzee directs your limbs like a marionette. "Come on, give your best motherfuckin' friend a taste."

"Bite me," you want to tell him, but you can't stop shaking.

He grins with more rows of teeth than a shark, more than can fit into his mouth. "Oh motherfucker I just might."

Maybe it's the drugs, or maybe it's the adrenaline, but you don't feel a thing when Gamzee tears into your wrists like a rabid dog. Detached, you can't help but think he looks like he's been bobbing for skulls in a bucket of blood. You shake your head at the sight of yourself, slumped over in a pool of your own blood.

Gamzee's eyes bulge when he screams, glowing like iridescent beetles. "Is it okay, dogg? Is it all motherfuckin pretty and kosher?" You think he's talking about your blood, and he is. The blood you share with Dave. It's not clean at all. You have to get it out immediately. "What you up and done. What you up and do. To your best friend, your blood brother, a brotherfucker!"

 _ **1999, Los Angeles, California**_

The dream melts around the edges like hot candlewax. When you wake your skin feels seared along the wrist. The first thing to greet you is the noise: a dull, repetitive thud coming from above your bed. You can't open your eyes but you can feel the low thrum; the hair on you arms prickled like a cat's fur. The sheets are damp, spunk drying like Elmer's glue between your naked thighs.

The whispers tell you not to motherfucking worry. They tell a motherfucker it will be over soon. You know there isn't anyone else here but you listen to the racket anyway. For now, you are frozen, but you count the beats of your heart calmly, recycling a rap you never finished two weeks ago on the shitter. Even your big toe can't be convinced to give a twitch.

You blink when plaster falls into your eyes, the ceiling shuddering with each sound. Dave's sclera are a flash of white in the darkness. Practice halts the barrage of images. You blame the chaos and stress of the Big Move. Before now your adolescence in Los Angeles remained a flippant memory buried deep in the recesses of your cis-masculine self-denial, before the pornography business but after the Daddy issues. You're not inclined to discuss either, even for plot relevant purposes.

Eyes narrowed, you scowl. "This better be good."

It never really is. Dave has been a total pussbaby since you picked him up when he was five years old. It was cute back then, when his eyes were the size of saucers and his hand could barely curl around two of your fingers. It wasn't cute when he cockblocked you every night for two weeks with nightmares about clowns. Dave never quite mastered the facade of not giving a fuck, the ballad of the honey badger.

"There's something living inside the vents," he informs you. He twiddles his fingers and turns his head so you can't see his eyes, even without the shades. He's been saying shit like this past midnight since you picked him up when he was four or five years old.

He inches closer to the bed until patience fails you and you pull him onto the bed by his wrist. With his back flush to your chest it almost feels like old times, ten years ago when he was small enough to fit on your lap without noticing your erection. Dave is almost an adult now, and you're still not sure if you're disappointed because you're a pedophile or a parent. For you, it's always been a fine line. Dave twists in your lap and pushes his ass deliberately against your crotch. Cortisol makes it easy for you to pop an erection.

"Bro, please," he says. It's kind of pathetic. He knocks his fist uselessly against your chest. You used to be the pathetic one, beating off in the bathroom before bedtime stories because you couldn't handle being around your baby brother.

You took all that away from him, and now he comes to you because he needs you to do this. Because you fucked him so bad and never taught him any other way to cope. When you were his age, this was your main coping mechanism too. You wish the guy who taught it to you cared for you the way you care about Dave. Nausea overwhelms you, and on second thought, you're glad you hate his guts. Maybe it's easier that way.

You almost wait just to hear Dave beg again, but something else is on your mind. Eyes examining the room, you shove one hand under Dave's shirt and the other into his pants. He didn't used to like it when you touched his chest but now it makes him squirm in your lap. His dick is average. It could be bigger, but it's cute in a boyish way and even better, Dave is insecure about it.

"Looks like little Davey wants to come out and play," you tease him, eyes scouring the ceiling. You know there isn't anyone else in here, but your eyes never believe your brain.

"Average," Dave corrects, words faltering when Dirk twists his hand. "Not small."

You give him a freebie and almost draw comfort in the familiarity of his impatience when he urges your hand. You press your thumb pad to the slit of his cock and his whole body freezes. His toes are curling already.

"Are you stoned?"

When Dave doesn't answer you don't bother repeating yourself. To be honest, you're not really sure you even said anything the first time. Paranoia creeps up your spine an inch at a time, the distinct feeling of being watched. Your hand works Dave's cock on autopilot as your eyes adjust to the darkness. There's a puppet strung from a hanger in the corner of the room that resembles a noose. Your brother squirms in your lap, eyes screwed shut, cock fit to burst. This is old hat. He grabs at your neck and you stiffen, eyes locked on the shadow shifting behind the vent across from the bed.

"Bro," Dave says breathlessly, but you aren't listening.

All you can hear is the stick of rusted metal when one of the screws holding the vent in place begins turning counterclockwise. Dave doesn't seem to notice, even when the first screw drops and rolls across the hardwood floor. The noise rattling inside your brain isn't real, can't be real, but you haven't quite been real since that night when something splinched your soul and slipped in a piece of the Truth. You're never really going to know what happened that night. At the very least you can take comfort in the scars, railroad tracks across your wrists to remind you that anything ever happened at all.

You debate a handjob hiatus but Dave is paranoid enough without having to hear about your brain's psychological bitch fits, and you really don't want to encourage his delusions of horror. Besides, your little brother's dick is already twitching for attention. This is easy to distract yourself with. Sixteen years his senior but just as pathetic. Something, deep, deep, down in your soul tempts your consciousness with the truth but you ignore it without even thinking. Dave comes into your palm and when you glance back at the vent it's perfectly untouched, all four screws intact.


	3. Chapter 3

_1988 Houston, Texas_

You've been here before, a long time ago. The pink and white wall tile stretches out above you into a softening yellow ceiling. It's all coming back to you. Someone finger painted a message into the fog on the heart-shaped mirror, but you don't know how to read yet. There's the familiar black shadow in the shape of a face that Bro calls "mold." This is your house in Texas right after you first moved in, before Bro redid the bathroom.

"Whaddaya staring at D?"

Bro's voice echoes behind you, and all at once you notice his presence behind you in the tub. He's got waves of heat rolling off clammy skin, but his eyes are soft. He never looks at you like that anymore. You lean against his chest, giggling at the sensation of hair tickling your shoulderblades.

"You're beautiful, little man," Bro exhales into your hair.

It's like you're hearing the words for the first time. Everything felt right back then but looking at the movie reel now is unlike anything you ever imagined. Little you is real small, so young your body isn't much more than a board with two flat nipples and an outtie. He can lift you as easily as one of his puppets. You open your mouth to speak but no sound comes out. Bro crushes your lips together with his thumbs and calls you a fish face.

You spit bathwater from your mouth and he smiles. His knees crowd you from either side.

"Has anyone ever touched you here?" Bro asks as he reaches between your legs with a white washcloth.

The tension in the room shifts. You shake your head, lips pursed, but noiseless.

Bro nods once, slow, before releasing eye contact. "If anyone except me ever tries to touch you here, you come and tell me." His laugh starts with a rumble in his belly that vibrates against your spine. "And I'll beat 'em up, hear?"

When you don't respond he brushes his fingertips across your ribcage until you're breathless. You glance around the room to confirm you're both alone before shyly signing the affirmative into Bro's palm. He's been teaching you how since your voice went quiet after the carnival. Your chubby fingers curl inexpertly against your thumb, but the message remains clear.

1999 Los Angeles, California

You wake up with a nose bleed and instinctively reach for the bong.

Real horror stories start like this: you're stoned, it's five am in the godawful morning, and McDonald's is closed. The nearest one is driving distance, so even if it were open there's no feasible way for you get there short of stealing Bro's car. Even the shoestring fries aren't worth the pain and humiliation of Bro kicking your ass. Technically, it's Bro's fault you're awake from his noisy sleepwalking bullshit-rifling through pills in the bathroom and knocking into the stove. Until he learns to turn it on, it's none of your fucking business.

The wake and bake is helping, but you're still too alert. You take another hit from the massive seventeen inch ceramic bong and place it back on the desk. The color and shape remind you of a coiled dragon dick. Hauling yourself from the mattress into your chair only falls short of a yoga move by two steps. You shovel Fruit Gushers into your mouth as you begin the arduous task of booting up your computer. Windows '98 flashes in front of you in all of it's 16-bit color glory. Four minutes later and you've just hit the login screen.

When a distant thud alerts you that Bro is as restless as you are, you sort of miss the spacious solitude and sanctity of your old Texas home. Your new place in Los Angeles features wall to wall carpeting and "a thousand hours of free Internet," as if Bro's pornography empire can't even support a basic subscription to America Online. When John sends you an IM, you forsake any further attempts to sleep in lieu of casual conversation. You haven't heard from him since before The Big Move, which you're hoping is less significant than it feels.

– **ectoBiologist began messaging turntechGodhead –**

 **EB:** hey dave!

 **EB:** you're up early.

 **TG:** or maybe im just up really late

 **EB:** yeah, the rest of us hard working teenagers attend this thing called "school."

 **TG:** but john havent you heard

 **TG:** im too cool for school

 **EB:** that's so lame, dave.

 **EB:** i can't believe you really said it.

 **TG:** just tell your sister to IM me already

 **TG:** i said i was sorry

 **EB:** did you dave?

 **EB:** i don't even want to know.

 **EB:** i don't own her.

 **EB:** she's my sister, not a dog.

 **EB:** if she wants to date you…

 **EB:** that's her business!

 **EB:** i'd appreciate you sparing me the details.

 **TG:** not a chance

 **TG:** lucky for you theres no details to spare

 **TG:** unless you wanna hear about my dream

 **EB:** no thanks.

 **TG:** okay so what had happened was

 **EB:** here we go.

 **TG:** im in the bathroom right

 **EB:** why do these stories always take place in the bathroom?

 **TG:** look john i dont make the rules

 **TG:** i just ride the wave

 **TG:** floating wherever life takes me

 **EB:** you've been living by the beach for less than a month.

 **EB:** you know i'm only an eight hour drive away now, right?

 **TG:** look im emailing jade

 **EB:** okay.

 **TG:** what should i say?

 **EB:** how should i know!

 **EB:** i'm not going to walk you through shmoozing my sister.

 **TG:** you think you can just show up and tell me how to live my life

 **EG:** dave

 **EG:** you're quoting the lion king right now.

 **TG:** be that as it may

 **TG:** the other night i had a nightmare about being possessed by a clown

 **EB:** again?

 **EB:** have you tried talking to anyone about this?

 **EB:** you know, besides me.

 **TG:** yeah the other day i told my imaginary friend

 **TG:** he was like dave you should really go to therapy about this

 **TG:** im not even real i dont exist this cant be a healthy coping mechanism

 **EB:** thanks for that

 **TG:** but after that part

 **TG:** jade may have given me the fellatio in the old restroomio

 **EB:** ok i'm done with this

 **TG:** but then she hannibal lectered my dick

 **TG:** john i saw the whole thing dude it was so fucked up

 **EB:** dude.

 **EB:** you realize there are websites out there other than 4chan, right?

 **TG:** youre supposed to be my friend

 **TG:** why dont you come do your job and investigate

 **EB:** we only investigate real, actual paranormal phenomena!

 **TG:** im not just fuckin around i was damn near about to crap my pants

 **TG:** good thing i was already on the toilet

 **TG:** am i right?

 **\- ectoBiologist has signed off -**

You lean back in your swivel chair to stare at the ceiling. There's black mold accumulating in the shape of a face. Everything about this house feels wrong, from the way the floorboards creak to pipes rattling in the middle of the night. Your old home rattled too-in ways you were used to. Somehow, this is worse. Connected to the world behind the glow of a screen feels so shamefully lonely.

The doorbell promptly scares the everloving shit out of you. It's something like a cross between a car alarm and someone having their nipples torn off. You slip into a robe and trip down the creaky stairs two at a time, just barely missing a faceplant when you reach the bottom.

Does the mail usually come this early? The wee hours of the morning are more your brother's thing. Your fingers hesitate around the doorknob before you unlock the deadbolt and chain link. There's no shiny morning sunlight to greet you this early, just a noxious fog that's probably one part water two parts pollution. The mail carrier looks displeased to see you at best. You scan the parcels before he can offer them so you don't end up staring at his lazy eye.

"Karkat Vantas doesn't live here," you tell the stupefied postman. The name looks familiar but you've never felt the sounds with your tongue.

"I've been delivering these here for years," he says, stuffing a stack of envelops fretfully into your hands before shuffling impatiently toward the next house, left eye trailing behind him.

As far as you know, the third floor has been evacuated since a fire nearly burned the roof off, and your second story abode remains untouched. The first floor is a cross between a basement and garage—a real designer breed. Bro keeps saying he'll fix it up when you're old enough, so the two of you can pretend you're living on your own and not sapping all his resources like some kind of financial leech. You'll believe it when you see it.

Upon further examination it isn't just a pile of mismarked junk mail. There are three magazines, the first two which are backdated issues of TV Guide. The next one is Entertainment Weekly, and behind it are two handwritten letters addressed from the Los Angeles Correctional Facility to someone else who doesn't live here. You trash the letters on your way to the fridge and toss the magazines on the couch. Maybe you'll read "10 Ways to Surprise Your Man in Bed," while you're taking a shit. Somehow, you doubt it.

Everything once edible is either currently rotting or coagulated. There's a perfectly unpeeled apple growing mold out of the stem, which up until now, you had no idea was possible. But isn't that how it always is? Some things rot from the inside out, because the real evil is at the core. Appetite thoroughly dissuaded, you drag yourself up the stairs and down the darkened hallway. The space beneath your door is illuminated blue from your computer.

You slide into your desk chair and scan your FRIENDS LIST. Every username is greyed out. Everyone is either idle, offline, or pretending to be. When everyone is asleep, the early morning silence is creepier than the late night darkness. Do you even exist if everyone else is asleep? It's hard to say. If a unicorn shits and no one is there to steal it, does it ever touch the ground? You fail three attempts before successfully logging into your Geocities account. Your website looks worse than a trashcan dragged through the dump, but you're no chump-you've got dedication.

The most recent comic strip you've written appears unfamiliar, but you can't pinpoint why. The illustration is in your style and the jokes are too lame to be anyone else's, but you don't remember writing it. You cough around the blunt in your mouth and close out of the page. You're probably just wigging out from the weed. It's a gateway drug, kids. A gateway to trashing your short term memory. (Stay in school.)

You wipe your palms against your thighs and take a deep breath before navigating toward your favorite site. The first two images stall halfway through the loading process, forcing you to use your imagination to replace the broken pixels. How is it your brother can run an entire pornography empire but you can't convince the router to load Playboy's website? Making up the details would be fine, except your brain keeps going to really fucked up places. Like what if the rest of her jaw is missing, or, maybe her eyes aren't loading because she doesn't have any.

Time to break out the big guns. Things are about to get textual and subsexual up in here. The AOL chatrooms are a cesspool for child predators and all manner of bottom feeders, and you're one of them. You go by the username turntechGodhead, because fuckboi69 was already taken. This is where you _cum_ to roleplay some of the most twisted shit the shadowy parts of your brain matter can spawn.

The wind howls outside and AOL chat alerts you that someone is initiating contact. You lean back and grab a blanket, goosebumps prickling your flesh, and wonder beyond impossible doubt how your bedroom can possibly feel like the back of a chest freezer when you know it can't be below sixty degrees outside. Scowling at the inhumanity of it all, you almost forget to respond to the new inquiry. You've received two additional messages since the first, each as nonsensical as the last.

– **gallowsCalibrator began messaging turntechGodhead –**

 **GC:** H3LLO

 **GC:** 1 4M 1NT3R3ST3D

 **GC:** WOW, YOU SM3LL D3L1C1OUS!

 **TG:** asl

 **GC:** 6/F/L4, YOU?

 **TG:** wow nice attempt at trolling me for a six year old you sure are apt at leetspeak

 **GC:** WH4T M4K3S YOU S4Y TH4T?

 **TG:** the purposely shitty way you replace certain letters with numbers gives it away

 **TG:** its a little overkill

 **GC:** YOU D1DN'T 4NSW3R MY QU3ST1ON!

 **TG:** 149/m/your moms house

 **GC:** WH4TS YOUR N4M3?

 **TG:** shaggy 2 dope

 **GC:** TH4T SM3LLS FUNNY

 **GC:** 1T R33KS OF UNTRUTH!

 **GC:** 1SN'T TH4T TH3 N4M3 OF 4 JUGG4LO PROPH3T?

 **GC:** OH NO, DON'T T3LL M3 H3 GOT TO YOU 4LR34DY!

 **GC:** 4R3 YOU DOWN W1TH TH3 CLOWN?

 **TG:** ok fine its ben stiller

 **GC:** 1 4M NOT TROLL1NG YOU 1 4M JUST TRY1NG TO G3T TO KN0W 4 L1TTL3 4BOUT YOU 4ND YOUR BRO.

 **GC:** 1T H4S B33N 4 LONG T1M3 S1NC3 1 H4V3 SPOK3N W1TH SOM3ON3 NOT D34D!

 **TG:** you are starting to sound more and more like a deranged stalker

 **GC:** 1LL H4V3 YOU KNOW 1 W4S STUDY1NG TO B3 4 L4WY3R B3FOR3 1 D13D!

 **TG:** okay so now on top of being six you expect me to believe youre dead

 **TG:** and you call me the liar

 **GC:** OK, L1ST3N B3N

 **GC:** WH3R3S TH3 B33F?

 **GC:** 1V'3 B33N D34D F0R a LONG T1M3, AND 1'V3 FORG0TT3N A LOT.

 **TG:** am i supposed to feel sympathetic

 **GC:** G4G M3 W1TH 4 SPOON!

 **GC:** WH4T D1D YOU 3XP3CT?

 **TG:** so you died in the eighties

 **TG:** that is a tragic backstory

 **TG:** forced to perpetually live in a world of high hairdos and madonna

 **GC:** IS THI1S CYB3RS3X?

 **TG:** so ghosts can have sex

 **GC:** OBV1OUSLY NOT 0R 1'D B3 H4V1NG ACTU4L S3X R1GHT NOW 1NST34D OF T4ALK1NG TO YOU!

 **TG:** rude

 **GC:** W3 D1DNT H4VE TH1S 1N TH3 31GHT13S, D4V3.

 **GC:** 1 H4V3 TO UT1L1Z3 M0D3RN T3CHNOLOGY

 **GC:** WHY DON'T YOU T34CH M3 HOW TO CYB3R PROP3RLY TH3N M1ST3R ST1LL3R.

 **GC:** 1F TH4T 1S YOUR R34L N4M3.

 **TG:** fine

 **TG:** if only because none of the other fishies are biting at this hour

 **GC:** OF COURS3.

 **TG:** ok

 **TG:** so

 **TG:** what are you wearing

 **GC:** 4 S3XY DR3SS W1TH S1X BULL3T WOUNDS 1N TH3 COLL4R 4ND TH3 KN1F3 1 TR13D TO D3F3ND MYS3LF W1TH.

 **TG:** hot

 **TG:** im wearing a tight sleeveless shirt that shows off my muscles

 **TG:** im like

 **TG:** at least six and a half feet tall

 **GC:** 1'M L1CK1NG MY L1PS

 **GC:** C4US3 1'M SO ST4RV3D FOR TH4T D.

 **GC:** ;]

 **GC:** 1 W4NT TO SLOB YOUR KNOB, TONGU3 CO1L3D 4ROUND YOUR M34T L1K3 4 B4LL PYTHON.

 **TG:** i yank up your shirt and kiss those tits

 **GC:** WHY DON'T YOU PUT YOUR MOUTH TO GOOD US3.

 **TG:** i want you to come on my face

 **TG:** before i slide my dick into your pussy strider style

 **GC:** 1 L1K3 1T H4RD, 4R3 YOU SUR3 YOU C4N K33P UP?

 **TG:** i can spin you round like a windmill

 **TG:** but faster

 **TG:** the sherlock holmes of sixty nining

 **TG:** drilling you nonstop

 **GC:** PL34S3, G1V3 M3 MOR3.

 **GC:** I'm gonna ride you like a bitch in heat. When I peel back the mask, revealing my truly clownish nature, you'll never see it coming. Don't you like how my face is covered in thick white paint, features smoothed over like frosting on a cake. I honk my nose twice as melting makeup drips onto your chest and spills onto the sheets. When you tense I rub my greasy cheek against your chest, listening to the disjointed thundering of your delicate heart. It smells like cherry faygo when I impale myself on your pole.

 **TG:** what

 **TG:** the

 **TG:** fuck

 **GC:** H4H4H4H4H4H4HA.

 **GC:** YOU KNOW WH4T TH3Y S4Y 4BOUT ST1CK1NG YOUR D1CK 1N CR4ZY.

 **GC:** 1'M S3ND1NG YOU 4N 3M41L.

 **TG:** no

 **GC:** 1 S3NT 1T. GO R34D 1T.

 **TG:** no

 **-** **turntechGOdhead** **is now idle -**

The excitement in your dick inflates slowly, like air escaping a leak in a poorly tied balloon. You drum your fingers on your desk and try to ignore the notification that _You've Got Mail!_ Maybe if you ignore it, it doesn't exist. You gravitate the cursor toward the correspondence anyway. How bad could it be?

* * *

 **To:** turntechGodhead

 **From:** gallowsCalibrator

 **Subject:** Urgent **  
**

If you don't send this email to at least 13 other people, I will come into your bedroom and stare at you. I won't see you, because I'm blind, but you'll see me. From in the back of your closet, I'll stare through the crack in the door while you snooze away. Did you know blind people don't have to blink? You have seven minutes to send this, or they'll send me.

If you don't believe me, why don't you check your bedroom closet? Of course, unless you're too chicken.

* * *

The problem with closets is there's just enough space to fit a very patient, very sneaky intruder. If you don't go through with this now you'll never be able to catch any sleep. Every step closer fills your stomach with dread; the computer makes a noise like a broken fax machine behind you.

You curl your fingers around the doorknob and tighten your grip. How could such a stupid chain letter get to you? When you try to turn your hand it doesn't budge, like someone is already holding onto the other end. Your heartbeat stills and then skips a beat while your brain stutters behind. You draw your hand back and watch, frozen in place as the knob unsticks with a pop and the door creaks open.

An avalanche of puppets pour out, none of which resemble Lil Cal. You reach for your katana but it isn't at your side; you haven't unpacked it yet. As you crawl through the mountain of plush ass the closet slams shut behind you. You cease movement and breathing simultaneously, trying to make out words from the low whisper rolling across your room:

 _Reclaim the sacrifice._

The window falls shut with a gust of wind and you ricochet across the carpet, sweaty palm pressed to the light switch. Predictably, AOL has timed out. What the fuck. If you tell Bro you're hearing voices, he's going to think you're crazy. He probably already does. The worst part is you didn't hear it so much as you felt it, like a chill in the marrow of your bones.

– **turntechGodhead began messaging timeusTestified –**

 **TG:** theres something wrong with this house dude

 **TT:** Just like there was something wrong with the last house?

 **TG:** exactly like that

 **TG:** but worse

 **TG:** this isn't just weird shit with lil cal anymore

 **TG:** I got a threatening email earlier today

 **TT:** Wait a minute.

 **TT:** Thee world famous Dave Strider got an email from someone?

 **TG:** or something

 **TT:** Very funny.

 **TT:** Was it about your blog, or your shitty webcomic this time?

 **TT:** What do you want to do Dave?

 **TT:** Move again?

 **TT:** Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that it might be you?

 **TG:** im emailing jade

 **TT:** Am I supposed to know who that is?

 **TG:** nah

 **TT:** So that's it?

 **TG:** yep

 **TT:** Fine.

 **TG:** cool

 **TG:** okay so

 **TG:** i met this girl online

 **TT:** The internet does not count as "part of this house," you know.

 **TG:** thats not what you said when you found my tumblr

 **TT:** You were posting nudes.

 **TG:** my body my rules

 **TT:** You're sixteen.

 **TG:** I'm seventeen.

 **TT:** It's still against the law.

 **TG:** so what do you want me to do

 **TG:** travel back in time and untake the nudes

 **TT:** Yes Dave, you got me.

 **TG:** i heard a voice in my room

 **TT:** I thought you received an email.

 **TG:** first i received a weird email

 **TG:** then i heard the voice

 **TG:** from inside my closet

 **TT:** We have neighbors now, Dave.

 **TT:** I told you living in the city wasn't going to be all roses and coming of age stories.

 **TG:** it wasnt the neighbors

 **TT:** Did you find anything in your closet?

 **TG:** no

 **TG:** what are you even doing up

 **TT:** Maybe I'm not.

 **TG:** really not funny

 **TT:** Hilarious.

 **-** **timaeusTestified** **is now offline -**

You draft the email to Jade, fingers trembling with rage, foot shaking incessantly beneath your desk.


	4. Chapter 4

_1984 Los Angeles, California_

Your name is Dirk Strider, and today is your eighteenth birthday. At least, that's what you're telling the producer. It is an especially important birthday because it means you are finally old enough to consent to engaging in lewd sexual conduct, and even better, be filmed and paid for doing it. The contract is unsurprisingly imbalanced in the studio's favor, and you know that means anyone from Los Angeles to New York is liable to see your ass get reamed via VHS. For all you care, you could be signing away your soul. It's not like you have anything to lose.

You glance up as two men walk across the set in conversation, one naked. It's the one in the leather chest bondage and assless chaps that stops you in your tracks. He's like a sexy black Billy Idol on steroids. Wound tight, your eyes swivel from where they've settled on his chest and back to his face. His lips form words your ears don't hear. You stick your hand out on autopilot, staring past his focused gaze at the plaster wall behind him. His cheekbones are sculpted beneath skin smooth as dark chocolate and slicked with sweat.

"Equius Zahak," he says evenly, like you don't already know.

Three weeks ago flashes behind your eye like a broken mirror: fragments of a rap battle he schooled you in, the way his mouth felt around your cock. The last time you met Equius you were 21; hopefully he doesn't give away your lie. You refocus and get a good look at his face for what feels like the first time. His chin tilts downward almost immediately, dark blue eyes cast on tile. Breath caught in your throat, you almost choke through your make pretend introduction. Boy got you sprung.

"Dick Strider," you say, squeezing his palm. Equius coughs and it becomes clear that you've already made an ass of yourself. "Dirk Strider!" You can feel the blood coursing through your wrist as you pull away.

The naked dude standing beside Equius makes an awkward noise. "Um," he says, looking between the two of you.

The director breaks the two of you apart with a single glance, reminding you to save it for the screen. Someone fits you into an embarrassing costume, something young and stupid you expected but couldn't quite prepare for. It ends up on the floor almost immediately. Kissing is in the contract, someone reminds you with no discernable sympathy.

The scene itself is a catastrophe. Three takes in and you're still soft as a marshmallow. To be fair, you aren't used to playing bottom. Despite all your Rainbow Twink and My Little Fuckboy, you've always been the most turned on when you were doing the fucking. The producer tells you that it just means you haven't been fucked right. You've done a fair share of exploring on your own, but who are you to tell a porn grandaddy master like him? He says you aren't tall enough to top, but you'll never stop holding out for a last minute growth spurt.

"Cut!"

A couple more mistakes like this and they're going to cut you out entirely, pubescent looks and exotic orange eyes be damned. Equius eases back from where he was hovering over you, pressing you into a cheap mattress with tacky orange and white polka dot sheets. You inhale as desperately and discreetly as possible. Without your shades everything in the room appears unnaturally bright. Your eyes are dry and there's a headache blossoming between your temples.

"Fuck," you sigh, sitting up and resting your arms on your knees.

At least you aren't entirely naked. The g-string you're wearing is snug enough anyone in a fifty foot radius can probably see the vein in your flaccid dick. A heavy hand hovers above your shoulder.

"High stress situations often cause-"

You narrow your eyes and he quiets. "I know."

This isn't your first time at the rodeo, just your first time getting paid for it. Seconds play with the silence between you; people crossing the set like background noise, unnoticed and inconsequential. He drops to his knees in front of you, but he's still only a little below your eye level. You bounce nervously on the spring mattress. Equius inches forward, staring up at you. Your fingertips twitch at the look, you want to see him pushed so much further than this.

Everything is peaches and cream until he stretches across you, climbing back onto the bed to tower over your slighter frame. You're not stupid. You know you look like every fuckboy power fantasy: a natural blond barely brushing the age of consent with baby hair pubes. During the intro they made you tell the cameraman your "birthday" to further fetishize the angle that the day before today, your boypussy was illegal to stick it in.

Equius kisses you sloppy and hard, lips swallowing your own. His strong tongue dominates all the space in your mouth, wringing the first real rise from you when your hips twitch forward. You're playing up the virginal adolescent thing, because that's what sells. Whether or not you're an actual virgin? That's nobody's business but yours. His roaming hands halt above your navel.

"Have you ever-?"

You roll your eyes. "It's not like that," you tell him.

It's not like you can't take dick, is what you mean. His breath at your neck tickles you tense. The pressure in the room couldn't be cracked with a pickaxe; you can already feel your fingers cramping up. Equius keeps his head low, breathing heavily and nosing along your stomach.

"What, precisely, is it like?" Equius asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Are the mics even picking up on that? Are they supposed to? Don't people hate it when tops talk too much? You turn your head away and bury a fist in his dark hair.

"Let me up," you demand, fingers wrapped tight around one of the thick wrists caging you in.

"You want to..." he shudders, eyes fluttering shut as he rests his clothed, weighty erection against your thigh. "Ride me?"

"Slut wants to ride him," someone behind you announces loudly.

It makes you cringe but it's easy enough to ignore. Equius slides one arm under your shoulders and tightens his grip, rolling over and effortlessly pulling you on top of him. Your heart knocks into your chest, upside down, when he gropes you. He slips his hand through one of the legholes and squeezes your ass, meaty fingers crawling closer to your crack.

"Shit," you say, which the cameraman loves.

This actually feels really fucking good.

Equius lubes you up and spreads you apart like a virgin being touched for the very first time. The attention is nice, but mostly it's just a constant reminder of what's to come. He squeezes a second finger alongside the first and licks his way back into your mouth. He wiggles his fingers in your ass, heavy forearm warm against your back, pinning you to his chest as he stretches you out for his cock.

"Dirk," Equius says as he fingers you from behind. "Ride me."

The barely restrained control is kind of doing it for you. Maybe you could be a Vers. He cranes his neck to leave a shameless "please" in your ear, vibrating like a ripped car engine underneath you. Your muscles spasm as he lines himself up between your legs. You reach behind and take his cock in your hand and begin easing yourself down. The blunt tip breaches you with agonizing slowness, reshaping your insides to the dick opening you up.

Just when you think you can't take anymore, he sinks in deeper, nuzzling your balls with his pubes and bruising your hand in his grip. You try to pull yourself up and back down but it's nothing like what you can do alone in your bedroom, with nothing but silicone and an endless supply of porn. You're pathetically graceless. When you're finally settled on his rod he groans deep and bucks inside you.

"Giddyup," you say.

He snaps his hips like a mechanical bull, grunting as he plows you from below. The bed creaks, and the cameraman ducks down to get a better view of the penetration. Equius flips your positions when you aren't expecting it, pinning you with his frame and leaning down to lick along the length of your neck. Your nerves light up like electrical circuitry when he pulls your ankles over his shoulders and folds you in half in like a cheap lawn chair. You wheeze at the feeling of Equius finally bottoming out.

"Relax," he says, keeping your asshole spread as he thrusts inside you.

There's perspiration beading on his forehead and collecting at the tip of his chin. It breaks and falls against your tongue when you blink, bleary eyed and breathless. The overhead light on the ceiling is really starting to give you a headache. Equius boxes you in with his bulging biceps, shielding your vision from the light and your face from the over eager cameraman.

"Milk me," Equius gasps against your lips. "Milk me dry."

His jaw unhinges and thick, viscous liquid unloads like a waterfall. You don't know if milk is better or worse than what you expected. It's definitely whole fat, not skim or any of that watered down horseshit. It splashes against your face, eyelashes dewy with creamy raindrops, filling your nostrils and making it difficult to breathe. You never agreed to doing a facial.

You snap your mouth shut too slow, esophagus bruising under the pressure of the stream of liquid. Why are you hard? Your lungs inflate like well stretched balloons and your belly becomes distended and fat. Equius falls away while you're drowning, leaving you suspended in an ocean of white wrapped inside a black hole.

1999 Los Angeles, California

Someone is trying to break into your apartment. You hear the scream across the hallway, but your eyes won't open and you can't move. The deadbolt on the front door unlocks with a resounding click you could recognize in your sleep. The phone in the kitchen must be dangling by the cord, the piercing dial tone is reaching you from down the hallway in your bed. Then you hear the click and the familiar recording you took with Dave two weeks ago starts up.

"Hey, sup? Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? Nah, just fucking with you, chump. You've reached Bro-Stri and D-Bag. We're probably screening your call. Leave a message."

There's a long pause where you almost think the person on the other end of the line is going to hang up. In a perfect world, maybe. Your heartbeat is urgent and fast when the tape begins to roll.

"Dave?" says a high, female voice. "I should have known you were going to do this."

This is your unofficial introduction to Jade Harley, your little brother's future matrimonial dicksleeve. Halfway through the message you regain control of your eyelids, but by the time you seize out of bed everything has gone quiet. You can't be sure if that part was in real life, or in the dream. Sleeping has been like this on and off for as far back as you can remember (so about ten or eleven years old, maybe. Everything before fourth grade is a blur.)

The voice outside your bedroom continues. "So all I'm saying is, if you're going to send me really alarming emails after midnight, at least make sure you're sober when you do it, because…"

Sensation returns to your body a toe at a time, until you can snap your eyes open and reach for a weapon. Your room is still cloaked in darkness, hidden between two buildings and blackout blinds. You scan the room, clear it, and leap to the lightswitch before grabbing your sunglasses from the bedside table.

"This kind of stuff isn't a joke," she says. "Paranormal investigation is my job."

Would she just get off her high horse already? Paranormal investigation is less of a real job than anything you've heard to date, somewhere below McDonald's and working as one of Santa's elves. You silently twist the doorknob and peak through the sliver of space, blindingly bright compared to the dim glow from your room.

Fuck, your brain must have fried eggs in there. The racket wasn't the answering machine at all. There's a stranger standing in the cross-section between your living room and kitchen, having a heated conversation with your brother. Shit. There's a pile of katanas on the kitchen table. After two weeks of saying you'd do it, Dave finally took the hint and did it himself. Has that much time passed already?

"What about this situation have I not taken seriously?" Dave says, in an impressingly deadpan tone you taught him when he was still just a little appleseed.

Beside him is a girl an inch or so taller, rail thin, standing with her hand on her hip in front of the toaster oven. She's pointier than she is pretty, with big, round prescription glasses that keep sliding down the bridge of her pinched nose. She tucks a strand of jet black hair behind her ear and gives your brother a look you can decipher from here.

"Do I have to say it out loud?"

"Alright," Dave concedes. "Maybe the stuff about the clowns is a little far fetched, but that doesn't mean it's not true."

"So basically…" Her voice reminds you of biting into a piece of unripe honeydew. "You called me all the way out here with no evidence?"

Dave leans his elbow against the counter and bends one knee. "It depends on what you mean by evidence," he says salaciously.

You choose this exact moment to make your entrance, face full of fuck, feet full of warts. The girl in the long blue skirt turns to watch you cross the kitchen in nothing but your underwear. You consider grunting salutations but can't quite manage to muster up the effort when the time comes. When enough time passes that Dave can't bear the awkwardness, he coughs out an introduction.

"This is Jade," he says robotically. "Jade Harley." He turns to you, half automatic, half looking for guidance. "And this is my brother." He swallows hard. Your name doesn't belong in his mouth, and he knows it. "Dirk."

He fixes his bangs with a shake of his head, adjusts his shades, and shrugs, forcibly casual. Is he showing off for you, or her? And more to the point, why would it even matter?

"Bro," Dave says, but it isn't quite a question, so you don't bother answering.

The conversation stalls while you open the cabinet and rummage around for the Fruit Loops. Jade attempts a feeble wave when you open the fridge and reach for the plastic jug with a cow on it. Straight from the udder of life itself. You pour the milk into the bowl first, just to make a show of yourself.

"Is he okay?" Jade asks.

Your eyes might not work right but you can hear an ant stub its toe from two blocks down. Whatever you dreamed about last night left you with a craving for creamy white sustenance, like an orphaned baby calf. When you tilt the spout over the bowl nothing happens, but you can feel the weight of it unsticking inside the container. You knock the back and a chunk of coagulated milk plops into your bowl of cereal like the ending of a bad bukakke scene.

"This has never happened before," you joke. "Honest."

Jade chuckles, despite herself. "I told you the fridge was broken," Dave complains.

"No, you told me it was going to break. Last week. And now it's broken. So either you sabotaged it to make your hypothesis true by breaking it yourself, or you knew it was on it's way out to begin with. Anyone with eyes can tell it's been here since this apartment was erected."

"Erected," Dave repeats, giggling like a schoolgirl. "You got me," he says, pretending to be shot. It's way too early in the day for this shit. "This is all part of my elaborate scheme to get a fancier icebox."

You shove the jug of soured milk back into the fridge and scan the empty shelves for anything that isn't a condiment. Neither of you actually bought groceries, because you were saving the space for the swords your lackadaisical brother finally unpacked.

"Stop calling it an icebox," you grumble. "And go buy milk."

You fish a greasy credit card out from your tighty-whiteys and toss is to Dave. He catches it between two fingers and scrunches up his nose. Jade glances between the two of you, struggling to comprehend what just took place.

"So this is Harley?" You acknowledge at last, stuffing a handful of cereal in your mouth. "The chick from your wet dream?" Jade's eyebrows rise and her face hardens. "Are you two like, together now?" You dust off your hands so you can make use of actual air quotes. "An item."

"It wasn't a wet dream," Dave insists, but the damage is done. Jade is going to grill him about the details the entire way to the store. "Maybe it was a little damp," he admits sarcastically.

You shrug. "You've always been sleep cocking ever since I picked you up."

"Um…" Jade takes a deep breath. "What was that?"

"Sleepwalking, I said." You scratch your ass. "Ever since he was a kid. Lots of walking, not much talking."

"I was mute," Dave corrects spitefully. "Because you took me to that horrorterror circus and-"

"Yeah, you always were dramatic, even when you were little."

Dave signs "fuck you" and Jade laughs like she's following along. You leave the two of them standing in the kitchen and finish off the box of dry Fruit Loops alone in your room surrounded by puppets. Six hours later, and Dave still hasn't returned with the milk. You're starting to wonder if he ever will, or if he'll never come back just like your dad when he walked out on your mom all those years ago.

Kidding. You don't have that kind of a tragic backstory, and if you did, you wouldn't let it get to you. (Even more than that, you wouldn't conveniently reveal it in the narrative for the sake of anyone but yourself.) You settle on taking a shower but now you can't stop thinking about your nonexistent origin, standing under the water trying to focus on the grainy memories left in your head.

You open your mouth under the faucet water and your brain regurgitates last night's dream against the back of your skull. The thought of Equius' milky breath consumes you. Your feet end up twisted when you try to pull back the shower curtain, and you barely manage to stop an embarrassing fall by bracing yourself against the wall. You haven't thought about that day in years; you banished that part of your life to the shadowy place beyond the horizon line after the first time you held Dave in your arms.

Whatever happened to that guy anyway? There's no way Equius was his real name. You seal two waterproof bandaids over the warts on your feet, and sit down at your computer to do some digging. When you hit the spacebar with your thumbs there's more resistance than usual; the c key doesn't budge until you press harder, releasing a crunch. Some of the keys are slow to respond or sticky, leaving a string of nonsensical letters jumbled together in the address bar.

For a minute you think you've broken it, underestimated your own strength and cracked the part underneath. Then you spy it. A spider the size of a pinhead, blending in the darker part of the woodgrain on your desk. You smear it dead with your thumb and flip the keyboard upside while the internet boots up. You grab a spare from the bin under your desk and switch them out, reaching for the screwdriver on your keyring.

Bugs don't really bother you, but after a couple hours clicking links your paranoia gets the best of you, and you're convinced spiders have infested your electronics. The first search for Equius comes back hopeless, returning with pictures of horses or constellations, and once, a picture of a huge horse dick. None of this is what you're looking for. At least not now. You save the horse photo for later and dig through a list of old contacts from when you used to work in the industry.

Once the responses start trickling in he isn't all that hard to locate. Multiple people appear to have a variety links pertaining to the pornstar Equius Zahak. You're halfway through dismantling the keyboard when AOL finally loads one of them. It's an online state obituary listing, and right in the middle, between the last names Zagoorni and Zanbar, is Equius Zahak.

Deceased, since 1985.


End file.
